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martes, 22 de noviembre de 2016

“Why shouldn’t I become the producer of my own ideas?”

Pedro
Rivero talks about his career until Psiconautas

Pedro Rivero spoke
about his film trajectory, which earned him the Goya for best animation feature
for Goomer in 1999 and best animated short film after Birdboy in 2010. He has
worked in every section of the audiovisual industry and taught Screenwriting.
He fears becoming his own character even if he doesn’t take drugs every day.
Instead of writing his own scripts, started working for people who draw better
than him in Basque films since 1989.

After approving
Selectivity, he didn’t know if studying Philosophy or making comic-books for a
living. He doesn’t reject his decision seeing how Donald Trump became president.
His last work was some comic strips for the Basque Diary and then changed to
make animation. His favorite animated film was Dumbo until discovered gay
connotations and decanted for Akira.

Twenty years was the
time Rivero took to make his own content inspired by Chapin, Lynch, Kurosawa
and Tarkovsky. The highlights of his assignments was a “Let’s go to bed” with
Gregorio Muro characters, the script for a San Ignacio de Loyola film for
children and Elliot Mouse’s Untouchables. The 90’s are the “mercenary” era
because he wrote for other companies.

“Why shouldn’t I
become the producer of my own ideas?” asked himself before a “laborious and
almost shameful” seven or eight years of working in “The Carnivorous Crisis”.
Rivero’s health decreased after becoming his own writer, producer and director.
He participates in an association to improve the rights of screenwriters and
not being discredited, since it’s the link of production.

The project that ruined him

Pedro Rivero started
suffering with making others cartoons and couldn’t stare at his son with
dignity “if I made assigned jobs”, he confesses. “The Carnivorous Crisis” was
going to require high graphic demands, which didn’t work in its time because
the only cartoon movies for adults were anime or South Park.

“I like living”,
exclaims Rivero, “not working too much, drinking and developing my projects”.
The movie was made in Flash as a last resource after spending his last subsidy,
“unlike Barcenas”. He had to sell his house and a friend had to give him the
other thousands of dollars to sell the idea and make it with Enrique San
Francisco as main lead and Nikodemo Animation. The script was reworked to be
lout and unapologetic, so they say “son of a bitch” 70 times in 50 minutes.

“The Carnivorous
Crisis” was a complete failure and hard to sell, a mistake was doubt about what
they were doing. It had a disastrous premiere on Sitges in 2007, followed by an
Internet Backlash. Rivero states there are some “hard to understand” actual fans
who make it a cult film, a political fable that ended as nonsense. After all
the effort, the next project needed less responsibility and more screenwriters
not to overwork.

Eight years
“fucking-up” depressed Rivero, who found Alberto Vazquez’s works in the Joker
comic store by personal suggestion. “Psiconautas felt over me in my worst
moment”, a depressing graphic novel with the potential of being a full-length
animated picture even before knowing the author in person.

A media for the bravest

Pedro Rivero states
that the flashback is a resource for cowards if it isn’t going to have an
emotional progression. “Fiction is also for cowards”, criticizes the
screenwriter, “you record four days and already call yourself a director”.
Filming is way more valuable and meaningful in animation, so they couldn’t
repeat the same mistakes from “The Carnivorous Crisis”.

Psiconautas has “a
gluttonous structure” for Birdboy, the druggie bird who hadn’t learnt to fly
yet, and his girlfriend Dinky. “Psiconaut” means “traveler of the mind”,
exploring though drugs “like every day in the bars”, exemplifies Rivero. A
short film would be an independent narration and complete work that could be
produced with the recovered money from the previous feature.

Alberto Vazquez also
wanted a short film instead of a pilot, trailer or teaser to show their graphic
capacities. They didn’t want a test of something which didn’t exist, like “The
Carnivorous Crisis”. “Birdboy” is almost a prequel to both the graphic novel
and the movie to tell the trivia of how the characters met.

“Birdboy” was sent to
six hundred contests, was accepted in two hundred of them and won more than
forty prizes. Rivero and Vazquez obtained enough notoriety, subsidies and
awards to produce the full length adaptation and recover the money inverted on
mailing film packages.

It has been a process
of almost nine years. He has an idea for another movie “even if it would be
better about postmen fucking”. Adding to his next projects, there is a
live-action film and a videogame “for the freedom”, tells the writer, “because
money is everything”.

“Accepting a world of lies”

Birdboy has a visual
script based on pictures that “are living thing ourselves could live”, explains
Pedro Rivero. The short film plays with the color palette before and after the
explosion, evolving the children into teenagers and using masks to accept a
fake reality.

The short film
presents its characters in their routine, “things that I don’t do in my home”,
mocks Rivero, “that’s why I’m divorced”. The explosion introduces the story
with a healthy Birdboy, “like me before The
Carnivorous Crisis”. It uses images to describe everything instead of using
words, “actions don’t use the entire visual spectrum”. The shot of burying the
bird expanded to show it wasn’t the first and color rises-up until Dinky takes
off her mask.

That’s the reason of
using visual metaphors like leafs that become birds and fish to tell that
everything has died. But too obvious symbolism can be counterproductive like
“putting elephants in the forest”. The composer only needed some notes to make
the soundtrack and do it emotionally involving.

Contrasts involve
subtitling the birds instead of making them talk. “Academicals liked the druggy
bird”, jokes Rivero, “we kept Birdboy’s world in silence”. A first shot of a
mask can tell an emotion, “communication without dialogue”. They wanted to reveal Birdboy’s emotions in
the last moment to highlight them. An unusual red pallet avoids the “paradigmatic
storytelling” of regular short films.

“The black legend of Birdboy”

There has to be a
theme under a story, “it can’t be built over nothing”. Birdboy was going to end
with his scene alongside Dinky “illuminating something between them” to then reject
her with impotence and “birds start singing” over the ending credits. Then, an
animator suggested them to hug and leave the viewer without answers outside the
message. An idea that was conceived drinking beer discovered the entire plot
over the course. Psiconautas uses some dark topics of comedy like drug trips
and dumb cops “whom seen like that”, jokes Pedro Rivero, “are sons of a bitch”.

Psiconautas was
thought as a full length film in 2010 for Birdboy, but started being made on
mid 2013. “Cinema is a continuous experience”, explains the screenwriter,
“doesn’t give time to assimilate emotions”. Alberto Vazquez wanted a different
adaptation because he already wrote the story once. So they took inspiration
from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Rumble Fish” for the concept of cultural
transmission, the fact that a character can die but make a difference.

Birdboy’s background
was only implied in the novel, “he only tripped”, so the short film deals with
that and only the introduction of Psiconautas retells it. The main plot is
about Dinky’s group escaping and Birdboy maybe joining them, a more coral play
that expanded the idea from a direct adaptation of fifty minutes.

Not shooting to the air

The biggest
difference between the Psiconautas novel and movie is the journey, which
evolved from a road “where they smoke some junks” to a dangerous zone with
obstacles. They had the advantage of being able to write the script while
animating during the production, which uses to be untouchable.

“Paradigmatic”, they
construct more active characters and experiment with the psiconautic experience
of Birdboy “not to shoot the air”. Every anticipation needs conclusion or
knowing why they haven’t, like going to a “legendary place” if it’s mentioned.
They include scenes like Birdboy’s loving father at the expense of flashbacks
that “didn’t support enough”, words of Pedro Rivero.

Alberto Vazquez
worked in the storyboard while Rivero the animatic or first view of the final
product. They amplify with Reloggio’s emotional relief they manage to draw and
even dub rejected sequences, specially flashbacks and exposition by other
characters. Birdboy himself is introduced trough a nightmare that foreshadows a
scene that happens fifty minutes later.

The first twenty
minutes introduce plenty of characters without overshadowing Dinky and
Birdboy’s relationship. The backstory is moved to the beginning so he story can
be told in a single day. There even is an art-book comparing the designs of the
novel, short and film.